1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to dark box apparatuses for fluoroscopy, fluoroscopy systems, and fluoroscopy methods.
This application is based on Japanese Patent Applications No. 2004-257240, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of Related Art
As a technique for non-invasively examining the interior of a specimen, some known confocal microscopes or multiphoton-excitation microscopes employ a fluoroscopy method for illuminating a specimen with excitation light, such as a laser beam, to examine fluorescence generated by the specimen.
However, since fluorescence generated by a specimen is very weak, it is difficult to acquire a clear fluorescence image due to external noise if fluoroscopy is performed in the presence of extraneous light. For this reason, if fluoroscopy is to be performed in a darkroom, a specimen is first positioned with respect to the microscope apparatus under external light, and then the specimen is illuminated with excitation light with all extraneous light blocked to detect fluorescence emitted from the specimen.
Though in a totally different technical field, a so-called dark-place observation device for examining the influence of particular wavelengths of light upon plants in a place dark enough to prevent the plants from being affected by light is also known (e.g., see Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2002-369624).
For examination with these known dark-place observation devices, plants are first positioned in a dark box completely protected from extraneous light to prevent the plants from experiencing biological effects, such as gene expression, due to extraneous light, and then an infrared light source emitting infrared light with wavelengths that do not affect the plants and an infrared CCD camera are placed in the dark box to observe an image from the infrared CCD camera on a monitor outside the dark box.
If fluoroscopy is to be performed in a darkroom such that a specimen is first positioned with respect to the microscope apparatus under extraneous light and then the specimen is illuminated with excitation light with all extraneous light blocked to detect fluorescence emitted from the specimen, unsuccessful positioning of the specimen, such as a shift of the specimen from the desired examination position, may occur. In this case, the positional relationship between the microscope apparatus and the specimen needs to be re-adjusted. Thus, the positional relationship between the microscope and the specimen may need to be adjusted by feeling with the hands in a darkroom where extraneous light is blocked. This may cause the objective lens of the microscope apparatus to interfere with the specimen, possibly damaging the objective lens or the specimen. In addition, repeating the procedure of introducing extraneous light for positioning and then blocking the extraneous light again for examination is time-consuming and annoying.